Fiction: From Writing to Publication
By Vickie Britton and Loretta Jackson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Vickie Britton and Loretta Jackson on Smashwords
Fiction: From Writing to Publication
Copyright © 2012 by Vickie Britton and Loretta Jackson
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
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CONTENTS
CREATING BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS
DEVELOPING YOUR OWN WRITING STYLE
PART TWO: CONSTRUCTING THE PLOT
THE PLOT OUTLINE: THE NOVEL’S SKELETON
MISCELLENEOUS WRITING AND PLOTTING CONCERNS
PART THREE: EDITING, MARKETING AND
EDITING
MARKETING
THE FINISHED NOVEL
PRINTABLE CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY WORKSHEET
RECOMMENDED BOOKS ABOUT WRITING
Should you be a writer? If you are seriously asking this question, the answer is probably no. Writers know they must write. The written word gives their lives meaning and purpose, and they will write with or without applause or financial rewards.
If this describes you, no doubt you already possess the necessary personal traits required to be an author, qualities like empathy, keen observation, inspiration, imagination, and determination. But the work calls for more than this, and learning to apply the skills of your craft takes great time and effort. The job is never completed. Becoming a better writer is a never-ending process. As the co-authoring team of Vickie Britton and Loretta Jackson, the authors of 42 published novels, we have learned much that is written in this book through trial and error, and we hope you will find this work useful in your journey.
Once you’ve made up your mind you want to write fiction, you must find the right idea, develop that idea into a plot, add believable characters, and set vivid scenes. Time must be spent planning, for your work must have form, direction, and meaning. Once you have put your chapter or book into words, then begins the process of revising the rough draft and polishing the sentences until you are satisfied with the results. If this sounds like tough work, that’s because it is. But nothing is more rewarding than the finished product—a well-written and published novel.
This book is designed to take a writer through the entire process of writing a novel from start to finish, from the first gathering of ideas to the marketing of the finished product.
Every book starts with an idea. Some ideas may just appear from nowhere, others have to be tracked down. If an idea doesn’t “come calling,” there are many ways to seek them out.
Truth is often stranger than fiction. For mystery writers, true crime and murder cases in newspapers, magazines, or on television can be a good place to draw inspiration for a fictional crime. Many writers have books whose initial idea was based on a true intrigue or scandal. The real story, of course, must be changed to fit your own work so your book will be new and original. Real names, exact settings, or the unfolding of events in an actual case should never be used as it has already been recorded.
History repeats itself. This makes history books a good source for ideas for any kind of novel. Personal accounts and journals will provide a better perspective for writing fiction than books filled with dry facts. For example, if setting a story in the civil war era with a female lead, a book with a title like One Woman’s Account of the Civil War will provide more human detail than General Lee’s Campaign Strategies. Books about local legends and ghost stories can also generate ideas for fiction. Travelogues are also interesting places to search for ideas.
Many good ideas can be found by being tuned in to the conversations and situations that unfold around you every day. For instance, while riding a bus late at night, one drunk remarked sadly to another, “You know, you never forget your first love.” He was obviously thinking back to a happier time, a broken romance, filled with the bittersweet regret of losing someone through time or circumstance. What a start for a novel or short story!
We got the idea for our novel, Path of the Jaguar, by being separated in the bustling Mexico City airport minutes before catching our ongoing flight to Merida. What if one of us disappeared here? We both got the same idea for a mystery story and decided to try writing it together. From that time on, we joined forces and became co-authors, all because of a trip and because we asked the same question, “What if?”
Numerous ideas are drawn from personal experience. As Flannery O’Connor said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” In the words of Frank McCourt, “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood; the happy childhood is hardly worth your while…” Both authors make the same point, if you get through childhood you have endless material available to you, material that is yours alone. The authors of books such as Angela's Ashes and Running with Scissors are examples of writers who took lemons and made lemonade.
The best ideas often come at strange times and in odd places. That is why authors carry notebooks. Start your own miscellaneous file where you can collect and record your random ideas and impressions. Get in the habit of putting them in a journal or on a computer file. Keep this file separate from your current project. The scraps of material we have gathered are over-flowing, most of which, however trivial it sounded at the entry, we have made use of in our writing. For even though not every incident deserves to be developed into a story, it very can be used for a scene or a description.
Record what comes to you right away, for it won’t appear again in the same quaint way. All writers have had the experience of trying to recall some exact word, some perfect sentence or description, only to find that it is lost. Gather all interesting accounts you’ve thought of or heard that might be of some use. Don’t hold back; write anything down that seems worthwhile. Incomplete snatches of life or stories incubate. Sometimes, years later, you may find the perfect ending to a story that you had started years ago. When you feel depleted, you will always have a backlog of random thoughts, character sketches, and plot ideas for inspiration.
Ideas are most often generated from interesting characters—what would be likely to happen to this particular person? Or they appear from an appealing (or unappealing) setting--what would be likely to take place here? Or they evolve from a theme, one arising because of your heart-felt convictions.
DEVELOPING IDEAS INTO STORIES
It's not enough to just have a good idea. If it were, everyone would be a writer. The hard part is turning that idea into a well-developed story. Examine your idea carefully. Is it suitable for a short story or is it capable of sustaining a two or three hundred page novel? Make your choices with care because you will be living, breathing and thinking about it day and night until it is finished. Only your own enthusiasm will see it to completion.
If you have gotten your idea from a news source, be sure to make the story yours. Although some authors have followed exact cases, or thinly disguised cases in their fiction novels, it is much wiser to make enough changes to protect yourself from any legal hassles or unpleasantness that might occur should some friend or relative of the victim recognize the crime or themselves. Change the name of the city, make alterations in events. For example, you might be inspired by a famous murder case. Make that case the basis for your novel, but don’t make it a carbon copy. People have already read about true cases in the news. No one really wants a rehash of a popular murder case, but you can base a fictional story around a true case, such as that of a vanished wife, and give it a totally different setting and ending. A fiction novel should have creativity, clever plot twists, and be a unique creation. Following the “roots” of several different cases and mix and matching them is a good way to find motivation for crime stories or stories that center around a trauma or scandal.
If you have decided to write a novel based on true events from your own life, don’t attempt to follow them too closely. If you want to stick to the truth, write a memoir, which is assumed to be factual and is categorized as nonfiction. But do make use of your real experience to develop your story. Some of these experiences may have been frightening, upsetting, life-changing or inspiring. All are a good basis for a novel and are capable of being developed into a plot.
You don’t have to have had the same exact experience as your character to make a fictional story from a true event. For example, have you ever been lost as a child? Chances are, you wandered off and mom or dad picked you up right away. (You must have been found or you wouldn’t be reading this.) But you know the panic, the fear, the feeling of being alone and afraid. Turn it into a story about someone vanishing in a more serious situation. A child might be lost in the woods, maybe the parents were killed in car crash. A hungry cougar picks up the scent of a lone child. Now you have the beginning of a story worth developing. Take an incident and embellish, embellish, embellish.
Go through your collection of random material and find the ideas that most appeal to you personally. Usually, if you run across a strong one, you will feel a sense of growing excitement or have the sensation of hardly being able to wait to get to the computer and start putting it all down in writing. If you don’t have that enthusiasm, chances are you do not have enough information or interest in that particular idea to make developing it worthwhile.
Now that you have chosen an idea, you still do not have all the makings of a novel. What you have is a premise. A premise must be developed a step at a time. First, you must come up with a cast of characters and provide a background for each. You must do research so you know enough about the setting, the theme, and the facts needed for the story you have chosen. Do whatever research you think you will need ahead of time. If you need detailed information, you will have to search for it in books, on the Internet, or conduct personal interviews.
So, right off, you have two tasks before you. Get your characters and plot outline in order, and gather the research material you will need. Now you are at the point of developing your idea into a story.
CREATING BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS